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Reviews by raeldrikp

75

Great Return to Form, but strayed too far

Much like the title of my review, its a great reboot of a great series but perhaps its gone too far from its roots. If you've never played a hitman game before, you'll find this an amazing game. Its got great graphics, strong and interesting mechanics, and more importantly makes for such a great change from the boring titles that are churned out every year.
But, if this isn't your first hitman title perhaps you'll be a little disappointed. The title takes away quite a bit of your freedom, in exchange for a "stronger" linear narrative. Gone are the days of prepping before a mission and planning your entire hit. Now you simply do things ad-hoc, picking up weapons as you find them, learning about hits while in mission. This all makes for a change, but is explained in the narrative, since you're on the run (no spoilers). The levels, while seeming quite expansive don't come close to the theme park level of old, and often are disguised as simply wide corridors.
The title also has an interesting "multiplayer" aspect, or rather a social gaming aspect. The contracts system has you killing any target you wish in any manner you wish, (i.e. kill the cook dressed as a maid with electrocution) and putting it up as a challenge for others to attempt. Its kinda fun, but does depend on finding interesting challenges, of which there are a few.

69

Not bad now

If you're coming from any other Total War game, you know what you're getting into. A slightly sloppy release generally, either with buggy gameplay or horribly optimized, not saying its acceptable, but you know what you're getting into. But, now after 8 patches the game is quite playable, the game runs well enough on most setups and there's enough Steam Workshop mods to shore up certain flaws in the game. However, they have failed to deliver on certain things still, i.e. family system and seasons.

78

Well realized, but limited

The strongest points in this game are the story and the presentation. It beautifully introduces you to a semi-utopian world floating admist the clouds. The architecture, music, character design all help you feel immersed in the era and game. Things look clean when they need to be, and gritty when they need to be, as opposed to modern FPS games where its ALWAYS gritty. This game knows what its trying to be. The story, is also somewhat unique, but anyone whose read a few books will be able to see the ending from all the foreshadowing about 1hr in.
There are somethings that I do disagree about with many other reviewers. The most important of which is Elizabeth. While many will claim that she's an innovative AI partner with a well fleshed out story, I disagree, well perhaps the latter is true. However, as far as an AI partner goes she isn't as innovative as people make her out to be. You'll find that her role in gameplay could be entirely replaced with a vending machine. Every now and then she'll throw you weapons/ammo/health/vigor, all of this serves to make the game far too easy. Whenever you're low on health or ammo, all you do is hide and wait for Elizabeth to help you out (played on hardest difficulty).
Additionally, the gunplay is just average. You'll find the guns often lack imagination, especially when compared with its lineage. But one can appreciate the Skylines, they make a generally boring and tedious set of run-and-gun gameplay more flexible.
Anyways, pretty fun game, buy it on sale.

91

Just amazing....

I bought this title at a 75% discount, so I wouldn't recommend it at $35 (it drops to a few dollars every summer/winter sale). But as an experience it is just amazing. The darkness/light combat mechanic really makes every fight one to death, it keeps you on the edge constantly. As you witness different creatures charging at you, you have to train your flashlight to drop their covers for a few moments, but those few moments could be the ones that kill you. For as you're training your flashlight on them, another creature charges up alongside you on the side...and well woow.... I don't know how to describe it. But really the combat system isn't the reason you'll love it. Its the narrative that sells this title. While you might see the ending coming, halfway through the game, Remedy still does an amazing job of writing the dialogue, pacing, etc. Oh I also forgot to mention the pacing, essentially the "levels" are divided into two parts, day and night. During the day, you'll tend to get a lot of the conversations and investigations done, and they serve as a well received break from the anxiety of the night. The night.... well prepare to be constantly anxious, twitching, running, worrying about ammo/batteries. Don't know what else I could say, but you have to experience it for yourself.

73

If you liked Dunwall Trials...

As the title of the review states, this is a dlc for people who really love DLC along the lines of Dishonored's Dunwall Trials. For me the reason I really loved Bioshock (1-Infinite) had very little to do with the combat, in fact I would say that the combat really was sub par, so I would tell you to avoid it if the reason you liked bioshock was for non-combat reasons. However, if you see beyond that, you will see a decent set of combat trials with nice locations (some new and others familiar). I would say that this adds about 2 hours of life to your title? The DLC to really wait for would be the two episodes of Burial at Sea.

76

Solid Title

Honestly I was worried about the port of this game from console, but it seems to be ok. The gameplay mechanics really haven't changed from the console version, as expected, so if you like MK 2011 then you'll like this. They seemed to have bumped up some of the graphics, but oddly they left the cutscene videos at a compressed 720p so its gonna look horrible. And perhaps at $30 its not exactly a solid buy, considering its a game thats 2 years old. Still, we don't get much PC fighting games so, theres that.